I will always think fondly
Of the park bench
Near the sad man’s statue
Whose beard of stone
Was sloppily painted
By a bunch of overenthusiastic pigeons

That silly park bench
Where we first kissed
And had our first public argument
About nothing at all
And at the same time
About everything we thought we had

At first our memories
Turned the grass greener
And the skies bluer
And sometimes it seemed
That sad man smiled
Though it might have been an malevolent grin

But soon it became tainted
A symbol of fleeting love
Of passion’s mortality
Its habit of swiftly disappearing
Like cagey, distrustful pigeons
And illusions fuelled by sentimentality

Now I understand the sad man
And consider his faith to be cruel
To want and crave and hope
Yet to be sentenced
His life writ in stone
Near an empty, broken bench

Late night at the Bar,
The neon sign said time to go,
Funny, when I got there it was all
Welcoming and overenthusiastic,
Garish, like a parade of clowns
With balloons that just got lost
Loosed, to the winds.  I had a few—
Too many and wrote a broke poem,
All alone surrounded by the clank
Of wood from a pole and clicks of levers
As the glistening 'patrons' shimmied their
Tithes to the used machines of *****
Pinned and the green tables pooled
And the women, who desperately looked
At only you, after you looked at them
And the indifferent, tallish Barman,
Who kept pouring smallish dreams
In a shot glass.  I stumbled, swirled out
And kissed the tar as was my want,
Every newcomer slogging in
Simply ran with not even noticing,
As I laid on the ground, they knew
That their time was soon coming.
That's called simpatico, or is it
Solidarity, maybe, whatever?
Anywho, I dusted my self off
And hightailed it back home
Before the broad, my old lady,
Jezebel, caught me on the sly.
The 'Queen of Sheba' was already
There— prostrated on our bed
Waiting to nail me.  My only excuse,
The muses— she wasn't buying,
I said baby, 'I ain't tryin' to sell
You no lie.  The words, they come
And they go, like a train that never stops
But you best be going, you best be jump in'
On that steel Goliath and ride that son to the gates
Of pearl and peace, them goldilock rays and then I said,
Hush, my little 'rock-a-bye' lady, you shush now,
My fresh night moon of Lilly flower, we's gonna
Make like nubile creatures, all naked and free,
There ain't no clocks little darling, there's
Just you an' me and all the rest of herstory,'
She bought that line!

Late night at the Bar,
The neon sign said time to go,
Funny, when I got there it was all
Welcoming and overenthusiastic,
Garish, like a parade of clowns
With balloons that just got lost
Loosed, to the winds.  I had a few—
Too many and wrote a broke poem,
All alone surrounded by the clank
Of wood from a pole and clicks of levers
As the glistening 'patrons' shimmied their
Tithes to the used machines of *****
Pinned and the green tables pooled
And the women, who desperately looked
At only you, after you looked at them
And the indifferent, tallish Barman,
Who kept pouring smallish dreams
In a shot glass.  I stumbled, swirled out
And kissed the tar as was my want,
Every newcomer slogging in
Simply ran with not even noticing,
As I laid on the ground, they knew
That their time was soon coming.
That's called simpatico, or is it
Solidarity, maybe, whatever?
Anywho, I dusted my self off
And hightailed it back home
Before the broad, my old lady,
Jezebel, caught me on the sly.
The 'Queen of Sheba' was already
There— prostrated on our bed
Waiting to nail me.  My only excuse,
The muses— she wasn't buying,
I said baby, 'I ain't tryin' to sell
You no lie.  The words, they come
And they go, like a train that never stops
But you bestbe going, you best be jump in'
On that steel Goliath and ride that son to the gates
Of pearl and peace, them goldilock rays and then I said,
Hush, my little 'rock-a-bye' lady, you shush now,
My fresh night moon of lilly flower, we's gonna
Make like nubile creatures, all naked and free,
There ain't no clocks little darling, there's
Just you an' me and all the rest of herstory,'
She bought that line!

The phone rings
at 3 am.
followed by a half-awake, "Hello?",
a muffled conversation,
and knuckles barely making contact with
my door.
She can't bring herself to wake me up
from a quiet sleep and the daydream that has been my life.
But I'm already awake.
And deep down I already know.

Fast forward an hour later.
I hear the out of rhythm steps
of your boots making their way up the stairs
and finally into the house.
We meet in the kitchen.
The wall of Smirnoff and beer
greets me like an overenthusiastic child.
Then I see your body,
a shape I almost don’t recognize;
your eyes look right past me
like you are talking to someone in the next room.
“I don’t know what will happen” you said,
as mom explained to me what was going on.
“I don’t know what will happen” you said
as you leaned on me like a crutch on our way to your bedroom.
“I don’t know what will happen” you said
when I left you to sort this out,
to put the pieces back together,
to sober up.
I crawled back under the covers,
painfully aware the ache that
has found its way to the pit of my stomach.

I hear another knock on my door,
not so gentle this time.
The door opens and I'm
greeted by a wobbly hand
wrapped around the barrel of a gun.
“I don’t know what will happen” you say,
as you place the gun in my hand.

I want to drop to the ground;
to curl into a ball and
let my tears lull me to sleep,
Only to wake up tomorrow
and have this all be a dream.
But this moment is as solid, and real
As the gun now under my pillow.
My heart races as it tries to outrun
someone else’s demons.
I don’t sleep that night.

Eight thousand puzzle-piece
butterflies
fill the memory carded banks
of discarded blank
cyberspace Alzheimers.

An empty room with silhouetted views,
creating illusion imitating
hallucinations
of a promise to reinstall the words lost
to safety proof
false parachutes.

Without canvas-sized,
indestructible evidence
or ink-based remembrance -
only erasable by flames,
flood or
unsigned credentials
fallen hand in glove
into
overenthusiastic forgetfulness.

there remains to be seen
a virus immune to tonic,
vaccine,
or innocent naive dreams
capable of murdering,
erasing,
and deleting every letter
conceived by keyboard finger-*******.

Here sits a love sick ******
with his head in the clouds
which would rain purple-hazed
words on the handful around;
those who remain concrete laced
flat on the ground in silence
while the sky promises rain -
yet only delivers clouds thundering sounds
of yesterday's romantic morose cries.

The dreams and visions of publicized ambition
dead
to files of hard-drive suicide -
by pornographic escapism,
prism-shaped with temporary reflection
of a soul due to expire.
Teadless and tired
in need of eternal service with supervision
by technology and savvy technicians -
mechanics of the afterlife,
while sighs of a Leonard Cohen existence
drown out the cries
of a bad cup of immortality.

Red-eyed mornings with deleted history
control-shift-n
and go go incognito
of a different kind.
free of decision or any conscious mind -
without a driver at the wheel
deciding the turns,
for any burning yearning sensation to stay,
go, hop-off and arrive.

The destination won't be seen alive.
Even as stains of lead will remain after death
with every orchestrated fable and tale
told by its grey-eyed author immortal,
while multidimensional gurus of ancient fires have stories and songs
done wrong by sins
of broken-telephone
though burning in hearts, souls,
and every orifice available to spark -
still end up with the scent of unholy ****.

The blank void of all memory is all that remains
throughout every special momentous occasion with hard-copy refection
or recollection of that holy time and spiritual place -
I await judgement and punishment
or divine rejection,
for falling in love and forgetting to save.